Bullets 'n' Babes

I've got a laptop for use in school (I'm a teacher) for preparing lessons etc, but it is old and crap. It has a 6GB hard drive in it that is pretty much full after the windows and office installations, so there's no rooom for storing all the data I need and hte software I use for teaching. The dept. has no money at the moment to get me a new laptop or a new hard drive (!), so I'm pretty much being forced to get one myself.

The new hd will be getting decent amounts of software installed on it, so would an external portable hd work? If I was to install software on it, would it not have to go on the main drive due to all the registry edits and the like that it will make? Want to know this cause an external one would obviously be handier overall than a new internal one.

Also, the processor in the laptop is a intel celeron ~700MHz and it has about 100MB of ram, and it currently has win 2000 on it. You think XP would run ok on it? The laptop is only really used for internet use, playing short video clips, office. No games or anything.

Cheers.

degeneration wrote:The new hd will be getting decent amounts of software installed on it, so would an external portable hd work?

Yes.

If I was to install software on it, would it not have to go on the main drive due to all the registry edits and the like that it will make?

As long as the external drive was always assigned the same drive letter, it would be fine. Retaining the same file paths is the important part.

Also, the processor in the laptop is a intel celeron ~700MHz and it has about 100MB of ram, and it currently has win 2000 on it. You think XP would run ok on it?

It will run perfectly fine. Other than the fact that XP is still being supported by MS (they discontinued support for 2000), I don't really see the point in upgrading.

Just to add to what Eva has said, an external hard drive would probably be slower than the internal one due to it going over the USB port, but then if the hard disk is really old and slow in the laptop anyway you may not notice.

As far as Windows and installations go (except for Eva's points) there is no different to an external and internal hard disk. Windows just looks on a different drive letter (hence it's crucial it's letter never changes) instead.

As far as external drive letters go. If you make sure it's always the first external device plugged in (that assigns itself a drive letter) then it "shouldn't" ever change.

To force a device to a particular drive letter or more to the point to force it back. Go to:

1. Make sure you've got no programs/files open that are using the external device.
2. Right click on "My Computer"
3. Click on "Management"
4. From Computer Management, on the left hand side click on "Storage"
5. Click on "Disk Management".
6. You'll see the list of drive letters right click on the one you want to reassign
7. Choose "Change Drive letter and Paths"
8. Click the "Change" button
9. Choose the drive letter you previously used, if it's not in the list it will be because something else is using that letter so unplug that device and try again.

Job Done! If you "force it" a few times Windows will eventually remember this and in my experience always default back to that letter instead of the next available one.

I imagine you'll need a user account with Admin rights to do this.

degeneration wrote:Also, the processor in the laptop is a intel celeron ~700MHz and it has about 100MB of ram, and it currently has win 2000 on it. You think XP would run ok on it?

I wouldn't go as far to say XP (or 2000) will run perfectly with only 100Mb of RAM, that's incredibely low. You really need 256Mb but in reality 512Mb as a minimum. I've used XP with 256Mb and it's slow, lots of hard disk virtual memory activity, then again if you find 100Mb okay XP shouldn't be much different.

Windows 2000 is technically Windows 5.0 and Windows XP is Windows 5.1, simply because they're 99% the same. XP just has a few more bells and whistles.

Presuming you can get hold of a licensed copy (this is a work laptop after all) there wouldn't be much harm in doing so (presuming you have all the drivers) but I'd recommend against "upgrading over the top" as this is always very messy and like Eva says there really isn't much point.

If I had a brand new spangily Windows 2000 laptop (obviously unlikely now) I'd upgrade it but as your laptop is so old I wouldn't bother.

Cheers for the replies. Think I'll go for the external hd as that way I'll get to keep it when I leave... won't be much point in me keeping an interal laptop hd.

Don't think I'll install xp on it either, might just upgrade the office package that's on it so that powerpoint etc work the same as they do on my home comp.

Whic brings up another question - will Office XP pro work ok on win 2000, ro does it need Win XP?

Yes. Windows 2000 and XP will happily work with Office 95 and upwards, even Office 2007. They may even work with older versions of Office, not that it's recommended.

Actually I'm not 100% if Office 2007 works on Windows 2000 (it should do but MS may prevent it). Vista works with Office 2000 onwards and maybe Office 95/97.

Office 2002/XP will be no different on 2000 to XP. Virtually all WinXP software works on 2000, because as I said XP is fundamentally 2000 underneath with a bit thrown on top.

Windows Media Player 11 and Internet Explorer 7 would happily work fine on Windows 2000 for instance if Microsoft didn't prevent it during the installation package, you can probably get hold of hacked installers.

If you do the Microsoft courses for Windows 2000 Pro you don't need to do the XP ones. They're considered the same.

FYI you'd be better off having a good clear out first, just to see if you can clear some more space for programs and general efficency. Check:

C:\Windows\Temp
C:\Temp
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Temp

And clear out the files in each folder (some files will be in use so don't worry if you cannot delete all of the files). You may need to Show Hidden Files/Folders to see this. I'd also have a look in Control Panel\Add-Remove and uninstall things you clearly don't need.

Install:

http://www.ccleaner.com/

This is a Free Cleaner program. It will only clear out Temp files you don't need and Registry settings you don't need. It's a small download and free too. Also give Defrag a run. There are other things you can do but those are the simple ones.

Cheers. That's my day at work sorted tomorrow... sod the kids!

On a 6GB hd, with the windows install, office and a few other things, about 4-4.5GB is being used currently.

So only 1.5GB free to play with. I've got over 2GB worth of resources for teaching with and hte software for my interactive whiteboard is about 500MB in size.

So even with a clear up, I think I'll be out of space fairly quickly!

True. It's still worth it anyway, for general house cleaning and general PC efficiency but yes I can see it won't do overall.